MUMBAI: Social media was blowing up over the weekend with a rumour that singer Niall Horan left the British band One Direction, however it was later confirmed that it was a hoax.

The rumours first sparked when sites like Yahoo Celebrity Britain and Sugarscape posted tweets claiming that Horan had opted to leave his bandmates Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Louis Tomlinson and Liam Payne, reports eonline.com.

The Yahoo Britain tweet, which was recently posted, read: "Niall has left One Direction!!"

Following the post, fans went out of control over the news and the hashtag #ReasonsNiallLeftOneDirection instantly began trending.

But later, Yahoo Britain took to micro-blogging site Twitter to reveal their account was hacked.

"Morning everyone. Just so you know, Niall Horan isn't in fact leaving 1D, our account was hacked last night. We repeat, Niall isn't leaving. And it would seem that we weren't the only ones either. @sugarscape were also hacked. Sorry for any upset this has caused," they tweeted.

A Columbia Records representative for One Direction also confirmed that there is "no truth to this rumour".